St. Augustine wrote: “Whether he will or no, a man is necessarily a slave to the things by means of which he seeks to be happy. He follows them wherever they lead, and fears anyone who seems to have the power to rob him of them.” No truer words by a Saint have ever been written about the human attachment to sin. For, it runs much deeper than just a desire for pleasure. In some it is an attachment to an inner-self that has somehow gotten twisted and mangled – then, the sin becomes the identity. This is most thoroughly realized in the modern concept of homosexuality. Because, in those instances when the man or woman succumbs to the gay identity, they are choosing to seek a happiness that can only be found, in their confused and deceived estimation, within homosexuality and the gay lifestyle. For this reason, some homosexuals feel the need to publicly “come-out;” to declare their identity and their allegiances.
Once this threshold has been crossed, the person becomes, as St. Augustine put it: “a slave.” And, they become a slave, not so much to their desires, but to the false concept of who and what they are – and to the idea of what they believe is bringing them happiness: the homosexual identity. Now, the desires are also certainly a great influence upon the gay mind, as, it is through sex that we find, fleeting as it may be, a sense of resolution and peace. For this reason alone, homosexual groups, and individuals, will attack anyone or any Church or institution they perceive as a threat, real or imagined, to openly and freely express their sexuality. A particular focus of hatred and vehemence is aimed at Christianity; more specifically, the Catholic Church. Because of this, when I entered the gay world, I quickly discovered a rather bleak landscape devoid of any spirituality or link to the transcendent; there was only the worship of the male body beautiful.
Sadly, in my generation, those who came-out in the 1980s and 90s, the unbelievable horror of the AIDS epidemic solidified many of these attachments into a bond through agony, loss, and death. Now, those who ultimately succumb to AIDS are doing so much later in life, and, sometimes relatively pain free. Strangely, in the post-AIDS era, the CDC has found a 12% increase in new infections among gay and bisexual men overall between 2008 and 2010, and a 22% increase among young gay and bisexual men aged 13-24. Without the inevitably of a premature passing, the need for solidarity has been transformed into a fatalistic acceptance of sexual promiscuity and perversity (masked by an illusionistic pursuit of monogamy and marriage through main-stream media acceptance) as well as the odd phenomena of conversion parties and bug-chasers. But, unbeknownst to them, the god of the body is continuing to fail: only propped up by steroids, Truvada, and a mixture of antivirals. Only, they continue to kneel down. For, the slave will follow its brutish maters “…wherever they lead.” And, in terms of gay sex – this usually goes all the way to the pits of human abomination, and complete degradation. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, foretold by Augustine, that one way or another you end-up a slave – either to a gay disease or to the homosexual identity itself.